A group blog to promote discussion, debate and insight into the history, particularly religious, of America's founding. Any observations, questions, or comments relating to the blog's theme are welcomed.

Monday, August 19, 2013

A Preview of the Next Volume of “Debunking David Barton’s Jefferson Lies”

BARTON’S LIE: It was Jefferson who introduced the measure in the Virginia legislature calling for a day of fasting and prayer in 1774.

THE TRUTH: Jefferson was just one of a number of the younger members of the Virginia legislature who formed an impromptu committee that, as he put it, “cooked up” a proclamation for a fast day. And, it wasn’t Jefferson who introduced the fast day in the legislature. Why? Because the committee members were concerned that the suggestion of a fast day might not pass if it came from them. They knew that nobody was going to buy that these young radicals, not even the quite religious Patrick Henry, were proposing this fast day out of genuine religious devotion. It would be obvious that they were merely using a fast day as a way of jolting the people of Virginia into an awareness of the seriousness of what was going on in Massachusetts. So, they got an older member of the legislature to introduce it, one who Jefferson described as having a “grave and religious character” that was “more in unison” with the tone of the proclamation that he and the younger members of the legislature had cooked up.

The larger truth is that the measure was apparently designed to unify people behind religion--which tells you a lot about the religiosity of the times. But genuine understanding of history is not on the agenda of Barton critic-types, only getting his scalp. So you end up more ignorant than when you started.

Jefferson - "With the help, therefore, of Rushworth, whom we rummaged over for the revolutionary precedents and forms of the Puritans of that day, preserved by him, we cooked up a resolution, somewhat modernizing their phrases,…(1)”

Apparently, in order to arouse the passions of the religious constituency that they were hoping to mobilize, Jefferson and his crew had to hit the history books to see how it was done in the day.

John Rushworth (c.1612 – 12 May 1690) was an English lawyer, historian and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1657 and 1685. He compiled a series of works covering the English Civil Wars throughout the 17th century called Historical Collections and also known as the Rushworth Papers).(2)

TVD "--which tells you a lot about the religiosity of the times"

Yes, that just like today religious passions can be aroused. If the rebellion was going to go forward, every constituency had to be mobilized to the greatest extent possible.

Thank you for the generous and kind words. All we can hope is that at the end of each day we are one tiny step closer to being less ignorant.

And may I say that now I, dare I say we, know a bit more about John Rushworth and his role in the rebellion. Unless, of course, Wiki and the other two sources blow it, in which case I humbly apologize.

I'm glad you found the Rushworth thing interesting and, dare I say, became less ignorant because it led you to look up who Rushworth was and learn something about him.

Since you found it interesting, I'm guessing that other people will too, and I realized that I should have explained who Rushworth was. I was also curious and looked him up way back when, the first time I ever saw that mention of him by Jefferson, but didn't think to explain who he was in my book. It's not to late to add that, so I think I should.

I should make you one of my proofreaders - not for typos, but to point out the things that you find interesting enough that they make you want to look up something so I know to say more about those things. :-)

Chris - "I'm glad you found the Rushworth thing interesting and, dare I say, became less ignorant ..."

I was really glad to have Tom point out how less ignorant I was. I immediately felt better about myself. So much so that I shaved, got a haircut, put on my best Tuesday morning goin' to meetin' clothes and sent 10 bucks to the local food pantry. My whole gloomy lack of self esteem issues vanished like smoke in the wind.

I've been meaning to say something about Rushworth at your place but can't find the PW and am rushing to get out of town for a bit. I will be heading to the mountains of Wyoming to seek greater wisdom.....I hope that I'll still be able to access Wiki.

And, when I get back and find that PW I'll be glad to add my 3, maybe 4 cents worth. :)

There's a long way to go before religion is represented adequately in the countries history - especially in academic history. I would argue that part of Barton's idea, that religion is under-represented, is right on. But that claiming it was a Christian nation in the way he's claiming it, is not. Let's move on to more fruitful grounds and attack those who continue the other more dominant tradition of minimizing religions importance.

I know some feel taken aback by the rise of the religious right in the past number of decades. But until religion is consistently integrated into the history of this country, there will continue to be a need for such activism. Chris R's activism (I'll call it that), is also part of a long tradition also going back a long way. It's part of a healthy tension between church and state that, I believe, the Founders saw as critical. I happen to agree.

It is Barton who, because of his real agenda, defeats his so-called claim of his purpose being to bring attention to the role that religion played in American history. I'll give you two examples:

He completely ignores the role that the Moravian missionaries played in keeping a significant number of Delaware Indians from joining in the fighting in the Revolutionary War and siding with the British. This is a real story of a religious group's important role in American history. But Barton's agenda is only to make it look like Jefferson supported mixing religion with government, so the only thing he uses the Moravian missionaries for is to make the false claim that Jefferson signed three acts giving federal land to missionaries to evangelize the Indians, a claim that has no truth to it whatsoever. If he were really trying to show the contributions religious people made in the Revolutionary War, he would tell the story of what the Moravians did. But he doesn't. He doesn't even mention the Moravians at all. He just lies about a few acts signed by Jefferson whose titles sound religious because they resulted from a part of the story of what the Moravians did. I, on the other hand, devote an entire chapter in Liars For Jesus to the real story of these Moravian missionaries. Yes, I do this because telling the whole story is necessary to explain why Barton's claim about the acts signed by Jefferson is a lie, but the bottom line is that Barton, while claiming that his goal is to highlight the contributions made by religious people, does anything but. He completely ignores the contribution made by the Moravians because all he wants to do is take the part of the story that he can turn into a lie about Jefferson.

Another example is Bishop John Carroll. Barton completely ignores what Bishop Carroll did during the Revolutionary War, which you'd think would be a great story to show a clergyman who was a patriot. He says nothing about Bishop Carroll, then a young priest, volunteering to accompany Benjamin Franklin on his 1776 mission to Canada, thinking he could be of service because Canada was largely Catholic. Then, when Franklin, who was not a young man, became ill on the trip, it was Bishop Carroll who took care of him and got him safely back to Philadelphia. Why, if Barton were really trying to highlight the contributions of religious people, wouldn't he tell this true story about Bishop Carroll? Because, in his real agenda, his only use for Bishop Carroll to create one of his lies about Jefferson - that Jefferson used his influence as president to try to get Bishop Carroll land in Washington, D.C. for a church. First of all, that claim is completely untrue, but more importantly it shows that Barton's real agenda is not to tell the true story of an actual contribution made by a clergyman, but only to take something else to do with that clergyman and twist into a lie about Jefferson.

So, who is really ignoring the religious influence in America's history?

The Kaskaskia Indians again? Again? You say the same couple of obscure points over and over.

The interesting part is that by giving money directly to the priests on behalf of the Indians, it was the first faith-based initiative! Unfortunately you miss the historical point of your own factoids because all you care about is punking Barton.

BTW, since Jon has turned this blog into the chronicler of your adventures, on Friday I was tempted to rub your nose in Michael Medved's rerun of your recent disastrous appearance on his show with a front page post. But I cut you a break. Thank me very much, Ms. Glass House. ;-)

It's Barton's lie that Jefferson signed three acts as president that granted federal land to missionaries for "propagating the gospel among the heathen."

Jefferson did no such thing. Those acts just had the words "propagating the gospel among the heathen" in their titles because they were part of the legal name of the Moravians' society. The three acts that Jefferson signed were extensions of the deadline for former military officers to register their land grants. The name of the Moravians' society is just in the titles of acts extending the military land grant deadline because those acts were extensions of an earlier military land grant act from 1796. The 1796 act ordered the surveying of the military district. A land grant that belonged to the Delaware Indians, but had been put in trust with the Moravians by the Continental Congress (for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with religion) was tagged onto the 1796 military land grant act by Congress because it also needed to be surveyed and was in the same area as the military land grants.

The surveying of the Indians' land grant was completed by 1798, so the extensions didn't even contain anything about the land being in trust with the Moravians, but because the name of the Moravians' society was in the title of the original 1796 act, it was also in the titles of the acts extending that act - one signed by Adams and three by Jefferson.

Oh, and by all means, please do post about my appearance on Medved's show. I haven't listened to it, and don't even remember why I was on it, other than I had to go on a bunch of right-wing radio shows a few months ago because of some MRFF thing. But I would just LOVE to hear what you have to say about it ... LOL

Tom, you're right, I don't know his exact claim regarding Christian Nationalism. I'm familiar with some older groups that had tried to take us a back to a Christian Nationalism that never quite existed. But they may have smartened up by now? I have read Fea book though, and as I alluded to, Barton is right to call attention to the role of religion in the founding.

Chris Rodda said...Oh, and by all means, please do post about my appearance on Medved's show. I haven't listened to it, and don't even remember why I was on it, other than I had to go on a bunch of right-wing radio shows a few months ago because of some MRFF thing. But I would just LOVE to hear what you have to say about it ... LOL

Laugh away, Chris, you were there for it and you were the laughing stock. He showed you up as an ignorant fraud about your anti-religious crusade as much you ever did to Barton for his.

I'd hound you all across the internet like you do to David Barton, Chris, but that's a pathetic way to spend a life.

Tom, you're right, I don't know his exact claim regarding Christian Nationalism. I'm familiar with some older groups that had tried to take us a back to a Christian Nationalism that never quite existed. But they may have smartened up by now? I have read Fea book though, and as I alluded to, Barton is right to call attention to the role of religion in the founding.

You'll "hound me across the internet," Tom? What are you, some freaky stalker? Your bizarre obsession with me is really getting out of control. You're really starting to sound like you need professional help.

What's your "comprehension" of the acts signed by Jefferson that Barton cites for his lie about Jefferson signing three acts granting land to missionaries for "propagating the gospel among the heathen?"

Here is the exact wording of Barton's claim as it appears in his book "The Jefferson Lies." He claims in a list of Jefferson's "presidential actions" that Jefferson:

"Signing federal acts setting aside government lands so that missionaries might be assisted in “propagating the Gospel” among the Indians (1802, and again in 1803 and 1804)"

I'll make it easy for you and everybody else here to check Barton's claim for yourselves. Here are the three acts he lists in his endnote for his claim, and links to them on the LOC website so you can read them.

This one is black and white - either these acts contained something setting aside government land for missionaries, as Barton claims, or they did not.

Go and read them for yourself, and then tell me whether or not Barton's claim is a flat out lie. Try to find a way to justify Barton's claim, Tom. Take all the time you want.

--------

An Act in addition to an act, intituled, "An act, in addition to an act regulating the grants of land appropriated for military services, and for the Society of the United Brethren, for proagating the Gospel Among the Heathen" (1802)

An Act to revive and continue in force, an act in addition to an act, intituled, "An act, in addition to an act regulating the grants of land appropriated for Military Services and for the Society of the United Brethren for proagating the Gospel Among the Heathen" (1803)

This 1804 act didn't have the title of the original 1796 act in its title, probably because the title was getting so long and confusing after four extensions that Congress just decided to stop the madness and call this next extension what it was. But it did contain the whole title of the 1803 extension in the body of the act.

In other words, Tom can't deny that Barton's claim about the acts signed by Jefferson is a flat out lie. His response, therefore, is to tell me to "get a life," which is quite ironic considering that he spends so much of his life obsessing about what I'm doing.

Do any of the three acts that Barton claims were acts where Jefferson was "setting aside government lands so that missionaries might be assisted in 'propagating the Gospel' among the Indians" set aside land for missionaries to propagate the gospel?

So, I just took a little time to listen to what Tom is saying was my "disastrous" appearance on Medved's show. (I actually decided I'd better listen to it to make sure Medved hadn't done any sneaky editing to make me sound bad, since it was a rebroadcast.)

I think I'm going to put the mp3 file on my server and put a link to it here so anyone reading Tom's comments can listen to it for themselves. I actually had Medved saying to me at one point how reasonable what I was saying sounded. I'd forgotten about that. If that's what Tom considers a "disastrous" appearance for me on a right-wing talk show where the host was out to disagree with everything I said, then I wonder what Tom would consider a good appearance! LOL

For no apparent reason except that he's got some freakish obsession with me, Tom wrote:

"...I was tempted to rub your nose in Michael Medved's rerun of your recent disastrous appearance on his show with a front page post. But I cut you a break. Thank me very much, Ms. Glass House."

And, this was Tom's response when I told him to go ahead and ended my response with an LOL:

"Laugh away, Chris, you were there for it and you were the laughing stock. He showed you up as an ignorant fraud about your anti-religious crusade as much you ever did to Barton for his."

And, when Tom couldn't find a way to respond to my question about whether or not Barton was lying about those acts signed by Jefferson, he responded:

"When Michael Medved gave you the Rodda treatment you showed you can dish it out but can't take it. You babbled like a fool. Justice was done.

So, even though my appearance on this radio show has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this blog except for Tom using it to avoid answering questions that do have to do with this blog, here's a link to the radio show he's talking about so everybody can listen to it for themselves, Enjoy (as much as anyone can enjoy listening to a Medved show):

Tom writes:"You don't think I actually read these rants, do you? My eyes glaze over and I suspect everyone else's. I come home home and see you fill half the comments box and laugh."

You realize that you are always the FIRST person to comment whenever Jon posts about something I've written, right Tom? And that the only reason for most of my comments is in response to your comments, right? And you do realize that everybody else here can go back and read the comments and see that, right?

What everybody else will see is that the reason I joined this comment thread was to respond to jimmiraybob, who posted an on-topic comment because he was interested in one of the historical figures mentioned in what I wrote. Then you started your usual barrage of insults and lies about me and aimed at me, adding crap about one of my radio show appearances that had absolutely nothing to do with the topic of this blog to your usual arsenal of desperation to avoid answering direct questions.

What everybody else will see is that I wouldn't have filled up half the comments box if the other half hadn't been you slinging your usual crap at me as soon as you saw that I was on this comment thread.

Still at it, I see. When you've been right about David Barton--which is most of the time--I've said you are.

What you do is skip where David Barton has been right, and that's the difference between genuine and honest historians such as John Fea and persons who make their living as professional anti-religious agitators.

Jon Rowe finds your antics amusing. I more enjoy the part when you're held to the same standards you hold other people. They call it justice.

I think Tom is trying to tell you that you might be straining out a nat and swallowing a camel. I would tend to agree.

The reason why is that I have personally seen how anyone on the Right who brings up religion and the founding gets labelled as a "revisionist" like David Barton. Why? Because if one takes a shallow look at this topic what I state may sound like Barton.

Point being that I do think you ignore what he gets right. I have to wonder why? If you all think that, even Jefferson, had the same view of what "secular" means as you and others that follow you do then I challenge you overall understanding of our Founding.

Is there some ignorance on the Right about religion and the founding? Yes, and I deal with it all the time. But I honestly see more ignorance on the Left and it is getting down right hostile at this point. Discussion is getting to be impossible and when it stops guns come out and Civil Wars rage.

And where am I supposed to find all these things that Barton gets right? In what I'm finishing up writing right now, which is a debunking of the chapter in Barton's The Jefferson Lies about Jefferson and religion in the public square, Barton makes about two dozen separate claims about Jefferson. Out of this two dozen, there are only three that aren't flat out lies. Of those three, one would have to be classified as a half-truth, and one is an accurate quote but doesn't have the significant meaning that Barton implies it has when you look at why he used the wording he used. Only one is actually completely true, and I do say in my book that this one is true. Of course it'll look like I'm only pointing out the lies, but that's because almost every claim that Barton makes about Jefferson in this chapter of his book is a lie.

My book Liars For Jesus only points out the lies of Barton and a number of other revisionists because that's the specific point of that book. It's not intended to be a complete history of religion in America. If someone wrote a book about the entire history of sports in America and left out football, you would obviously say they left out something that should be in that book. But if someone wrote a book about the history of baseball and didn't include anything about football, you wouldn't say that not including football in that book was because the author was trying to cover up that football existed, would you?

I would ask you to think about the possibility that by narrowing the focus of your book you may do more harm than good if the goal is a rationale discussion with Right wing Christians.

Throwing out Barton's entire thesis(his general thesis is the thesis of others more accurate then him) because he overplayed his hand is not giving both sides of the story.

America is not a "Christian Nation" in the way that some Evangelicals use that term. I agree. But is it not a "Secular Nation" is the way that most strict Secularists use that term. Why point out one side's error and ignore the others?

Your book is used repeatedly to claim America was and is a "secular nation" is a way that was totally foreign to our Founders. Even the least religious of them.

I think that is the point that Tom is trying to make with you. Stop nailing one side on minute BS and letting the other side off scot-free on glaring revisonist history.

The vast, vast majority of strict secularists still believe that all the Founders were Deists. That is absurd and that is the view that has made it into our public schools.

I think you analogy is flawed too. Your entire premise seems to be that America was founded to be a strict secularist nation and that History is on your side.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact that Jefferson(perhaps the least religious founder) supported public fasts on state level and refused to do so at the Central govt. level when he was President shows that religion was left to the states. This is the reason that there is very little mention of God in the Constitution.

That and slavery were deal breakers. They punted to keep the coalition together.

If this is correct then most, perhaps only many, "separation" laws today would have been unthinkable at the time of the founding.

Bottom line - David Barton uses countless lies to support his thesis. If his thesis were true, he would not have to lie. He would be able to find enough true examples to support it. But he can't. This isn't to say that there was no religious influence on America, but it was nothing like what Barton and the other revisionists claim it was.

Because of jimmiraybob's interest in finding out who the "Rushworth" mentioned by Jefferson was, I figured that other people might also be curious about who he was, so I added a bit about him to the final draft of this section, which now begins:

BARTON’S LIE: It was Jefferson who introduced the measure in the Virginia legislature calling for a day of fasting and prayer in 1774. The language of the legislature’s resolution was Jefferson’s.

THE TRUTH: Jefferson was just one of a number of the younger members of the Virginia legislature who formed an impromptu committee that, as he put it, “cooked up” a resolution for a fast day. What Jefferson meant by “cooked up” was that, since neither he nor any of his cohorts actually knew how to go about writing a resolution for a fast day, they had to get out an old history book to see how they were worded. The reason that none of these young members of the legislature knew how to write a fast day resolution was that the last time one had been issued in Virginia they were only children. This is what Jefferson was referring to in a quote that you’ll see later in this section, in which he said that they needed “the help, therefore, of Rushworth.”

John Rushworth was a seventeenth century English lawyer and historian who, in the 1640s, compiled a work called the Historical Collections of Private Passages of State. This work contained a compendium of various acts and other documents from the time period leading up to the English Civil War, including proclamations for days of fasting and prayer. Jefferson and the other committee members simply borrowed some language from a proclamation they found in Rushworth’s Historical Collections and adapted it to the purpose of the resolution that they were writing. This is why the language of the 1774 resolution that Barton quotes can’t be attributed to Jefferson.

David Barton's lie that more than half the signers of the Declaration of Independence were ministers

Lie? I hear him claim they "trained for the ministry." The official University of Pennsylvania website says that prior to 1751,

"The four colleges then in existence in the English colonies -- Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, and Princeton -- were all schools for educating the clergy, rather than preparing their students for lives of business and public service.

Did David Barton claim they were ministers, or just that they "trained for the ministry"? Did I miss anything?

I don't want to start a war with Chris Rodda. She has always been treated with respect at American Creation when she's stopped by to comment here.

But am I missing something here? By Chris Rodda's own use of the word, people who are in error are "liars." If the University of Pennsylvania is in error here, then they are "liars" too.

And if Chris Rodda is in error here, then...

My question is only: Do we have a direct quote from David Barton saying more than half the signers of the Declaration were "ministers"?

Because looking at the prosecution's [Chris'] video, all I hear is "trained for the ministry" being mutated into "ministers," something I can't find David Barton saying.

Yeah, I'm offended by the words "Liars for Jesus," but right now, I just want to stick to the allegation made in Jon's original post.

Since we're "history detectives," surely we can get to the bottom of what was said in the 21st century with video evidence.

I don't want to call anybody a liar. I prefer to think when people are in error, they're simply mistaken, perhaps reading or hearing what they want to see or hear.

But after wasting my time looking at the video in question--I don't give a shit about Barton or his critics--I'm seeing one thing typed on the screen but another thing coming from Barton's mouth.

Let me---and us @ American Creation---know what you see & hear. Mebbe I'm in error.

The format of the book is that each section starts with a short overview where I describe what Barton's claim is followed by a brief couple of paragraphs explaining why it isn't true. And then right after that I put the direct quote from Barton so everyone can see exactly what he claimed in his own words, followed by the more detailed debunking. Apparently you didn't even bother to read far enough to see that before starting your shit again.

I decided to format it this way so that if someone just wants the quick answer (as people often do when they're in the middle of an online debate or something) they can just read the short overview, but they also have all the details and sources available right after that to refer to if they are challenged and need to document the quick answer. This type of format was suggested to me by people who read Liars For Jesus and said they wished it had summaries that they could use when they just need a quick answer to something.

And, as for my video that Tom keeps dredging up (yeah, the same Tom who jumps all over anyone who brings up ... um ... those Kaskaskia Indians), the video contains a clip of Barton himself making the claim about the DoI signers being ministers. Why on earth would I put a clip of Barton making the claim in his own words in the video for everyone to see if I were trying to lie about what he said?

And, why don't you explain to everybody why the Family Research Council made Barton reword his DoI signers being ministers claim in a video of him that they were using? Apparently, even the FRC agreed that Barton was being deliberately deceptive with that one! Do you think the FRC is a bunch of secularists who are just unfairly bashing Barton?

As for this particular Barton "lie," as usual you turn a nitpick into some ideological victory. But Jefferson did work on the resolution, even if he wasn't the only one who drafted it or was the one who actually introduced it.

You left those parts out, making your half-truths just more clever than Barton's, but no more honest or informative.

Jefferson was just one of a number of the younger members of the Virginia legislature

How many? You don't say. [The answer--five. "Just one of a number" is so vague as to be meaningless if not misleading.]

Jefferson and the other committee members simply borrowed some language from a proclamation

What language? You don't know. You don't know if they added any language of their own. You don't know if Jefferson was the primary drafter, as he was for the Declaration. They also, said Jefferson, "modernized the phrasings." That makes the words Jefferson's or whoever's who drafted them.

Jefferson and the other committee members simply borrowed some language from a proclamation they found in Rushworth’s Historical Collections

BF mine. Not accurate, if Jefferson's account is your source.

"...we rummaged over for the revolutionary precedents & forms of the Puritans of that day, preserved by him, we cooked up a resolution, somewhat modernizing their phrases..."

Meaning they grabbed phrases and ideas from more than "a", one document. Which also lessens the implication that Jefferson & co. merely "borrowed." Boilerplate legalese is "borrowed" routinely in documents.

Flabby work. D-plus, generously.

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/account/

If you'd have quoted Jefferson directly, and linked to what Jefferson actually said, your charge of Barton "lying" would have been revealed as the noxious hyperbole it is.

Wow ... old Tom is really working himself into a tizzy now. For someone who insists that he pays no attention to me, he certainly spends an awful lot of time ... um ... paying attention to me! LOL

And, Tom ... it is standard practice in books to indent quotes that are several lines long or longer, and not to put them in quotation marks. It is perfectly clear in all of my writings what are direct quotes and what aren't. You're the only person who seems to get confused by this. Actually, I don't think you're confused at all; you're just grasping at straws to make me appear dishonest. But knock yourself out if that's what floats you boat.

I only came back to this thread to post the thing about John Rushworth so jimmiraybob would see it if he's looking at the comments. I have no intention of getting into one of these endless pissing matches that you seem to need to have.

Tizzy? Holding you to your own standards, at which you fail. You don't seem to be able to function outside your echo chamber any better than Barton does.

You don't even have a historical point about this John Rushworth thing exc to attack Barton. It's so trivial as to be meaningless by the time you get done with it. Neither does your work convey the truth of the matter very well.

There is a historical lesson here that religion could be used to rally popular sentiment. That's because America was a fairly Christian nation. Heh.

D+. Try to tell the whole story next time instead of just indulging your Barton fixation.

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